All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
— Albert Einstein
When I went to work at Birmingham City Hall — 15 years ago last November, for those keeping score at home — I was assigned, by virtue of my appointed position, a city vehicle. Also, for the benefit of any who are keen on mundanities, I will tell you that the car I was assigned — and which I drove for all of the nearly 3-and-a-half years I worked for Mayor Bernard Kincaid — was a 2-year-old Ford Bronco SUV. It was not equipped with power windows, power seats, tinted glass, or any feature that catered to one’s sense of luxury, unless you count the factory stereo that included a CD player.
That, of course, is the way it should be. Beyond certain very stringent and acceptable limits, public servants should have no expectation of receiving ancillary amenities, and they certainly are not entitled to them. I don’t necessarily mean to attribute Zen-like qualities to the attitude toward public service that prevailed during my time at City Hall — nor, for that matter, to impugn the attitude among the city government’s current workforce, of which I continue to know personally many outstanding and dedicated members — but I do think that the austere appointments of the average city-owned passenger vehicle served to reinforce the notion that public dollars are precious.
There is no better illustration of this for me than the day I was handed the keys to my city car by the manager of the city’s fleet of motor vehicles. After he briefed me on the internal controls on permissible use of the car, I asked him if there was a general rule of ethical thumb he could share.
“If you’re working a little late in your office,” he said, “and your wife calls and asks you to pick up a loaf of bread on your way home, stop and get the bread. If you’re lying on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, eating potato chips and watching football — or even if you’re out raking leaves or cutting your grass — and your wife asks you to go to the store and get a loaf of bread, take your own car.”
Yes, it is that simple, isn’t it? I mean, it was not the first time I’d ever felt like an idiot — nor has it been, nor will it be, the last — but this particular instance came at a good time. It came as a reminder that if the personal benefits and advantages one derives from public service — some legitimate, or at least defensible, and some decidedly not — begin to outweigh the benefit to the public that one presumably is there to serve, then one has ceased to be a servant of the people.
In fact, one has become something else entirely, which is to say a drain on public resources. An albatross, shadowing the civic machinery of Birmingham, keeping our city tethered short of grasping its hopes, its dreams, its possibilities. Of this type of “public servant,” neither Birmingham nor any other city, town or village of which I’m aware has ever lacked for its share of sterling examples.
The other type, those who take as sacred the public trust, doesn’t always get as much attention. This, too, probably is as it should be — public service as its own reward, the opportunity to influence community affairs a responsibility to be taken seriously and exercised with discretion and restraint. I don’t know who said this, and if no one else claims it, I will: Good government is boring. Especially if you’re bored by people doing their jobs well.
That’s why I’m drawing a good deal of optimism from what seems to be happening with two of Birmingham’s abundance of quasi-independent and/or quasi-governmental boards and agencies that receive large amounts of public funding. I’m talking about the Birmingham Board of Education and the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority.
These organizations, the BOE and the BJCTA, are charged, respectively, with educating the children who live in the city proper and moving mass numbers of people of all ages, races and economic circumstances effectively, efficiently and safely throughout Birmingham and the surrounding region. That’s all. Reasonably important tasks, yes?
These two organizations have a number of things in common, not least a lengthening history of underachievement and a shared status as hotbeds of political maneuvering and ingrained cronyism. In this, they have not been much distinguished from virtually any other such board or agency you’d care to name. That’s the way Birmingham has worked for many, many years.
Recently, another point of commonality has emerged. At both the BOE and the BJCTA, new, energized leadership at the board level is making a difference. While the outcomes of recent moves at the two organizations remain to be seen over the next several years, the willingness of individual board members to form working coalitions — and, not coincidentally, voting majorities — suggests that growing numbers of citizens throughout the community are developing a “now-or-never” understanding of the necessity of systemic change in Birmingham. Increasingly, people across the city are feeling empowered to help effect changes both large and small.
Having just secured an ad valorem tax increase that will provide $7.8 million for comprehensive pre-K and co-curricular programs in music and the arts, the BOE is moving to get a new superintendent in place. In a nationwide search that closed last week, a total of 72 candidates expressed interest in the position, with 52 of those ultimately submitting applications. Including Alabama, applicants came from 23 states, as well as one each from the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
“The search firm cast a wide net,” BOE president Randall Woodfin told me Monday. “But they also told us that they believe the large number of applicants is due in part to the turnaround taking place under this board. Passing the tax referendum and just seeing the community support that’s behind the Birmingham City Schools, those are the things that will help us attract the person who will do the job we need them to do.”
Meanwhile, after the drama of December and January — in which then-chairperson Johnnye Lassiter came out on the short end of a showdown with a group of fellow board members and Ann August, executive director of the MAX bus system — the BJCTA board settled into extensive planning sessions that are culminating this week. Among the first priorities was adoption of a new board and governance structure for the system, which has improved substantially under August’s leadership.
The showdown in January came after Lassiter attempted to usurp or undermine August’s authority on several occasions, and August was on the verge of resigning at a special called meeting. Instead, the board voted to replace Lassiter as chair with Patrick Sellers, and subsequently began the in-house planning process just completed.
In developing the plan, the BJCTA board and staff worked with Doug Eadie, a consultant who specializes in helping nonprofit and public organizations develop “high-impact” relationships between board members and executive leadership. Presenting the final version of the plan to the board, Eadie praised board members for taking on a reorganization that, among other things, will limit the board’s authority to overrule executive actions.
“I’ve talked to people around the country about what we’ve been working on here in Birmingham,” Eadie said. “This is recognized around the country as a major turning point in the world of transit. It is almost unprecedented for a board to take this kind of initiative to turn itself around. Birmingham is setting a standard for governance that is very high.”
The board agreed to adopt the plan, on a 6-0 vote, with one abstention and two members absent. Afterward, Sellers said the kind of things that we in Birmingham have not heard members of publicly funded boards say too often — at least, not in a way that made us believe them.
“This is great but greater things are coming,” Sellers said. “We’re going to be aggressive about making changes to the system. We all know there’s some changes that are long overdue.”
Now, that’s the Birmingham that I believe in.
